Gui Zhou/Aui Zhou Chicken at Grand Sichuan NY
this is probably one of the best dishes I have ever eaten - I've searched the internet to find a recipe, but nothing seems to even come close to how they make it as Grand Sichuan. Anyone out there know how they make this dish? I know there's a lot of sichuan peppercorns, but other than that, I've got nothing. Please help!
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3 Comments:
This is one of my favorite dishes, too! I wonder if the dish is accurately named on the menu? That might explain the discrepancy between your search results and the dish as served at GSI.
Alaina Browne at 5:21PM on 03/07/08
I love this dish when prepared at the 9th Ave Grand Sichuan location.
I know the chicken is deep fried. Unlike Gen Tso's the coating has no egg and is very thin. The sauce contains dried chilies and Sichuan peppercorns. I'm guessing it also uses one of the fermented soybean pastes with chili. It likely contains one of the Chinese cooking wines as well. There is a tart sourness that probably comes from some sort of vinegar. I don't believe any sweetener is used. The salt content is also pretty low. There were scallion segments as a vegetable along with some fresh root vegetable I can't identify. Was the root vegetable lotus root maybe bamboo shoot? I can only guess that it wasn't a canned Chinese vegetable. The sauce doesn't leave a gooey mess on the serving plate so I doubt much thickening starch is used. I believe dark meat chicken is used.
janjop31 at 12:37AM on 05/09/08
I recently sampled this at three different grand Sichuan locations. No two locations make the dish exactly the same! The Chinatown location uses water chestnuts as the vegetable and sautés the chicken. They also use a sauce similar to one I've found marketed by Kweichow Foods as "Hot Fermented Soybean" I even detected a few of the whole fermented soybeans in the sauce. The Grand Sichuan East located in the 50s on 2nd Ave uses fried crinkle cut potato pieces as their vegetable, stir fries the chicken and uses almost no Sichuan peppercorns.
Upon closer inspection my favorite location on 9th Ave uses a small amount of sugar in the sauce. The quantity of sugar is small but enough to offset any excess saltiness. I enquired about the fresh root vegetable and was told it was fresh bamboo shoot. Upon close inspection the red oily quality of the sauce can only come from chili paste. The deep fried coating of the chicken almost completely absorbs the sauce and no gooey mess is left on the plate only some red chili oil the vegetables and fried bits of whole dried chilies along with Sichuan peppercorns that have also been fried. I believe either peanut or sesame oil is present in the dish.
janjop31 at 4:09PM on 05/13/08